


Effervescent

by Perrault



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: F/M, Lost Love, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 10:18:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12430728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perrault/pseuds/Perrault
Summary: Melbourne's thoughts on the day of Alexandrina's marriage.This was just supposed to be a drabble. Spun a little out of control on length. No plot, no expectation of any continuation and no editing. Enjoy.





	Effervescent

Their romance was one doomed never to leave the realm of fantasy. 

It was a dreaming thing, and thus all the more pure, despite the impiety of his thoughts

He dreamed of her hands upon the piano, how the notes would shiver in the air under the involuntary contractions of her fingers as he sat beside her, hands buried somewhere deep within her skirts, teasing and caressing the hidden paths of flesh and nerves, all the banal trappings of humanity that by the virtue of chance and chance alone formed the foundations of a queen.

He could not begrudge her her cruelty or her fascination with this German princeling. Cobourg was young, spontaneous, where he himself was constrained by duty, his script so well learned and practiced he could predict his own words and actions for any variety of circumstances, all the permutations of royal pique, and urban, banal scandal that was bound to follow a beautiful woman and her handsome but subordinate consort. 

There were no secrets in this modern court, Emma Portman tittered behind her fan, and the little queen was none the wiser. 

“Dear little Vickie,” she gushed and sneered. 

“That orchid you sent her. White, pure, untouched. Virginal. Weak. Spineless. Parasitic. If the poor child was better versed in botany perhaps you might have succeeded in sending the dagger through her heart but as it was —“ 

“As it was?” 

“Well. How difficult it is to grow an orchid.” 

“How difficult it is to distill a line of kings, stretching back for centuries, to the sad little mix currently sitting on the throne.” 

“Poor girl. 

“Poor bloody England."

Perhaps the greatest fault in her upbringing was that she'd been coddled overmuch. 

This boy could give her more, could, in fact, give where he could only take. Take time, take energy, take resolve, take love, and smash it to a thousand effulgent shards. 

And yet, it broke his heart. That precious heart, that inquiring mind, that young body that promised so much. God was bound up in her, braided into her hair, nestled between her breasts, heaven forgive him, her thighs. 

That small act of heroism, the rescue of that insufferable little spaniel had won her heart. 

But Christ. 

What she was. What she was to him. 

Nymph. Dryad. Queen. Empress. All words fell short save the last. She was as imperious as Nefertiti, as clever as Cleopatra, and as unconsciously sensual as Astarte. 

To worship her would be as natural as to sing. 

To fuck her would be as sacrilegious as to spit in the face of the Virgin herself. How he would have spit. 

The sadness in her eyes. How she'd wished that the bloody ponce would only smile at her. 

He hated the German. 

But he was not her Leicester. However much he had desired to be, if for no other reason than it would have made him the most powerful man on earth. He knew the laws as she did not, the needs of her kingdom as she did not, could command her respect not only in terms of love, but age, education, and his position as Prime Minister. No, he could not. And in fact, it was because of his power, not in spite of it. 

Leicester had grown alongside Elizabeth from childhood, had rested his downy head alongside hers in the summer grass, had ravished her against a white oak, had tucked flowers into her flaming hair with his own brown hand. 

His own hands too fair, her hair too dark. Himself too old, she too foolish. 

He was overpowered by something more simple than cunning. Something still more innocent, more powerful, more humiliating. By youth itself. 

He was cowed by a child. A boy no older than the queen herself. He was overcome by the sympathy of two strong impetuous minds united in their recusal of old methods and old men. 

Only a fool would have turned her away when she offered herself to him. And what a fool he had been. 

He might have loved her better than the world. 

His sobriety, his tolerance, his fatherly gentleness had been his undoing. 

He had held the most powerful woman in the world in the palm of his hand. She had confessed her heart, had poured her love out before him like a fragrant oil, pooling it at his feet, to lap at his ankles, threatening to pull him down to drown in its scent. Had he commanded her, she would have melted to the grass, let him have her there in the cool air, the vaulted sky above them, the wings of the rooks for their canopy. 

That effervescent child ran headlong into her own future, leaving him in the swirling mist of her past.

She would indeed forget.


End file.
